Abit
I’d moved on, best I could, after Fiona told me to get lost. Not that she’d had the decency to tell me to my face. No, she’d used my answering machine, just saying that same thing about not having kids would be like cutting off a limb. I kept hoping she’d call back so we could talk things through. After more than a month went by, I gave up.
Things like that change you, as surely as a scar on your face makes you look different. But a scar on the inside does even more damage. It runs deeper, out of sight. You’re never the same person after somethin’ like that. How could you be? Those old-timers I sat with outside Della’s store—I used to wonder how they got so broken. No more.
Just when the hurt was easing some, damned if that man I saw Fiona swaying with at a concert didn’t show up at the shop. Dr. Gerald Navarro, he said as he shook my hand (his hand so cold and limp it reminded me I needed to cook that trout Tater Matthews brought over). The Doctor was taller than me and so out of my league, I felt like a real hick, what with sawdust in my hair and them baggy overalls. At least he’d taken off his white coat, but his shoes were shiny, his shirt pressed and unwrinkled late in the day, and his suit perfectly tailored. Even his beard looked clean shaven, not creeping up on five o’clock shadow like mine.
He walked all round my shop, running his hands over works in progress, like I needed his damn fingerprints messing up the finish. Finally he said, “Fiona speaks so highly of your woodworking skills,” beaming like a preacher blessing his flock. “I want to order a dining room table for her new apartment.”
New apartment? That meant I didn’t know where she was living anymore; I couldn’t even picture her sitting on her couch or easy chair, looking out at that big oak tree shading her front window. And Dr. Gerald Navarro seemed to have no idea I’d been her true love, oncet upon a time. I didn’t tell him she was still mine.
He asked a bunch of stupid questions before ordering a curly maple table, four-foot by three-foot rectangle with curved legs. I had trouble writing up the order form, my hands were shaking so bad. And I did somethin’ I’d later feel ashamed of: I charged him extra. Maybe that went against my notion of “be kind,” but it helped take some of the sting out of the order, at least at that moment. Not a lot, but enough to ease my pain. Like Della’d said, I needed to be kind to me, too.
I was glad The Doctor was already heading to his car when Shiloh came back from meditating, though he seemed to know exactly what had just happened. We both looked out the window as he drove off in a Porsche. “Figures” Shiloh said as he squeezed my shoulder. “Sorry I ever told that joke.”
I wished he’d left it at that, but he went real quiet-like. “What?” I asked.
“What do you mean ‘what?’?”
“You’re pondering somethin’. I can tell.”
“We’re getting like an old married couple,” Shiloh said, pulling on his mustache. “I was just thinking about the Second Noble Truth: According to Buddha, the basic cause of suffering is ‘the attachment to the desire to have and the desire not to have.’ That’s why you’re suffering. You want what you can’t have.”
I was so heartsick, I just ignored him. I didn’t have the stamina for two jerks in one hour.
After that, I went over to Della’s, saying I needed to buy some milk, but we both knew I was after somethin’ besides groceries. I told her about my afternoon.
“Did you tell Shiloh to go fuck himself?” I could tell Della was mad; her face had turned bright red. She got that way when folks dumped their judgments on me—or really anyone she liked. “First the so-called Christians did a number on you while you were growing up, and now the laughing Buddha is having a go. What’s next? You don’t know any communists do you?”
I chuckled a little and answered both questions. “I didn’t say anything like that to Shiloh, and I don’t know any commies.”
“Opportunity lost,” Della said as she priced some funny looking spaghetti.
“Yeah, but I have to work with him. I need his help.”
“Well, there’s that,” she said, though I could tell she hated to admit it. “I have a lot of respect for Buddhists—real ones,” she went on, “but Shiloh has grasped just enough to be dangerous. I hate it when any convert, be it Christian, Buddhist, or whatever, uses tenets like weapons against someone trying his best. That’s not how they’re meant to be lived.”
“Well, when he started up again, I did tell him to take a long walk offa short pier.”
She smiled. “Of course you’d find better words.”
By then it was closing time, so she invited me up for an easy supper, as she called it. She’d poached some salmon that she put atop lettuce with an amazing creamy dressing. Said it had avocado in it, but I couldn’t figure where she’d got ahold of one of them round here. We focused on eating for a while, but after a spell, she asked, “What kind of table are you making that damn doctor?”
“I’m not making it for him, Della. I’m making it for Fiona.”
I didn’t know which of us was more surprised when, all of a sudden, Della started to cry. I couldn’t recall when I’d seen her broken up like that. She excused herself and went into the bathroom. I could hear her blowing her nose and all, and when she came back she said two things: “Abit, I’m proud to know you,” and “All I’ve got for dessert is chocolate ice cream.”
As if that were a problem.
I put everything I had into that table. I chose my best curly maple boards and sanded the table as smooth as Fiona would’ve. I worked so hard, I started dripping sweat into the wood. After a time, I realized they were tears. I tried sanding them out, but they were as stubborn as my heartache. Under the table, I carved the initials RB + FO for Rabbit Bradshaw + Fiona O’Donnell. They were tucked up near one of the leg joints. You’d have to look hard to see them.
I got a good photo of the table before some men The Doctor hired loaded it into their truck. I was glad I didn’t have to see him again. Any satisfaction I’d gotten from charging him extra was spent.
Late that day, I was finally finishing up Della’s table when a shadow fell across my workbench. I turned and saw Daddy standing in the doorway, looking kinda ghostly with the low sunlight shining behind him. It startled me so bad, I was glad I wasn’t working on the table saw, or I’d’ve been short two or three fingers. He’d never just stopped by in the two year I’d made my woodshop there. That didn’t surprise me, given how I was raised, but I wondered why he was coming round. I already felt down, what with my last connection to Fiona gone with that table, so I didn’t want him heaping his shit on me.
“Daddy, what brings you over?”
He kinda hemmed and hawed for a little before saying, “I just wanted to say that I really liked that girl, Fiona.” I braced myself for some lecture on how I’d fucked up. “And I’m sorry she disappointed all of us. You especially.”
I couldn’t remember when Daddy had shown me any sympathy, and I was grateful for it. You’d’ve thought that might’ve made my heart hurt even more, but it eased it.
“Thanks, Daddy. Won’t you come on in?”
“No, no, you’re busy.”
“But I could show you what I’m working on.”
“Oh, I see plenty from the window—when you load it onto that Sherlock’s truck.” I’d always known there weren’t much that got past the big plate glass window at the front of the house, and maybe somehow he knew that table was for Fiona.
“You could still come on in,” I said as I put down my chisel. When I looked up, he was gone.